Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC

Bujari Gamarruwa

Diyn Babana, Gamarada Gadigal Ngura

In greeting you in the language of the Gadigal, Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways, I pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to the Elders of all parts of this beautiful continent from which you travel.

High Commissioner^[1], Parliamentarians,^[2] Consuls-General,^[3] distinguished guests, friends all, including the Official Artist of the British and Irish Lions’ Men’s Rugby Tour of Australia, Ben Mosley, who is, as I am sure you’ve noticed, working his magic on his gold leaf background canvas in the alcove to my right.

The 26^th of January 1888 was the centenary of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove, Captain Arthur Phillip having found Botany Bay unsuitable. Four Months later, on 31^st of May 1888, an advertisement appeared in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph announcing that on the following Saturday, the 2^nd of June, a “grand international football match”^[4] would be played at the Association Cricket Ground—now known as the SCG.

The adversaries were NSW and a team of visiting “British footballers”,^[5] the match part of a tour of New Zealand and Australia organised—as a private business venture and not sanctioned by the Rugby Union of England—by the English cricketers Arthur Shrewsbury and Alfred Shaw.^[6]

It was something of a bold plan; football played under the Rugby rules had yet to gain much foothold in the Australian public mind; there were clubs and scratch matches, but they were often played under a mishmash of rules that, although based on those codified at the Rugby School in 1845, were often subject to considerable local variation. They also had a reputation for devolving, in the words of a NSW Parliamentarian who attempted, unsuccessfully, to get the game banned in 1864, “vicious displays of brutish fist-fighting.”^[7]

Nevertheless, as the first appearance by a football team from the ‘Old Country’ on Australian soil, the match at the SCG was keenly anticipated. As a reporter of the time noted:

the arrival of a British representative football team, and their appearance to do battle with a New South Wales team, brought public interest in football at once up to the requisite fever heat, which almost approached that which the fever of a champion sculling or running or boxing match, or a cricket encounter with Victoria, produces.^[8]

News had also been filtering from ‘across the ditch’ of the tourists’ athletic and sporting prowess; of the 9 matches they’d played in New Zealand in the month before arriving in Sydney, they had lost only two. And, indeed, those loses would be the last they would endure for the remaining 26 matches of their antipodean excursion—at least under the Rugby rules—but I’ll come back to this.

Indeed, some reports estimated that the crowd at the SCG was as high as 13,000^[9], with entrants paying one shilling to get into the ground and two shillings and sixpence to sit in the stand.^[10] Amongst them was my predecessor, Lord Carrington, 16^th Governor of NSW.^[11] I’m not sure who Lord Carrington would have been barracking for; like all NSW Governors before 1946, he was British.

In any case, the British team “ran over” New South Wales, winning 18-2.^[12]

The post-mortems were many, most pointing to the size, tenacity, and fitness of the British players. However, although humbling their opponents, the touring team did give an example not only of how Rugby should be played, but also of how exciting it could be.

As a reporter noted, after the match:

it may be safely asserted that while the British team remains and plays among us, football will be popular, and when it goes it only needs New South Wales to do as some great countries of old-namely, to learn from defeat how to gain victory.^[13]

I emphasise those last words only to point to the expected result this Saturday night with the Wallabies being down two nil at the moment.

However, to return to that first British tour, to bolster the financial feasibility of their tour, Shrewsbury and Shaw’s arrangements included the tourists’ playing 18 games under the ‘Victorian Rules’—the precursor to Australian Rules—whilst in Victoria and South Australia, where the domestic football form held sway, as well as another in NSW.

A set of rules had been sent to England the year before; the British team also had the service of two Victorians during the initial New Zealand leg to “coach [them] in the mysteries of the Australian game.”^[14]

In their first match, on the 16^th of June, they came up against Carlton, defending premiers of the Victorian Football Association, at the MCG, playing in front of more than 20,000 people.^[15] They ended up being beaten by 11 goals.^[16]

Nevertheless, the British learned quickly, and won their next match against Bendigo.^[17] Indeed, of the 19 matches of Victorian Rules they played in Australia, the British won 6,^[18] including against the legendary South Australian club Port Adelaide.^[19]

Despite the touring team’s on-field success, and their promotion of football played under the Rugby rules, it was a financial disaster for its organisers—perhaps because of their “poor estimation of how much 22 rugby players could drink” over 249 days; Shrewsbury and Shaw returned to England ₤600 out of pocket.^[20] In today’s terms, that would be nearly £68,000,000.^[21]   

In celebrating the 137-year-long tradition of British rugby tours that the British and Irish Lions tour of 2025 represents, we celebrate also the spirit of friendly rivalry, sporting excellence, and love of the game of rugby that that legacy embodies.

In thanking those early rugby pioneers from Britain, who played such an important role in solidifying, and then growing the popularity of Rugby in NSW, I also thank them for this:

In 1899, during the second British rugby tour of Australia—this one officially endorsed by the sport’s governing body—Australia put a national rugby union team on the field for the first time.

The British Lions, became, then, not only Australia’s first international opponent in rugby; but also, our first conquest, when Australia won 13-3. Naturally, as Aussies we look forward to Saturday night to repeat that performance, but most importantly to wish both teams well.

To the Lions, you have reminded Australia what a great game Rugby is and what a marvellous team you are on and off the field.

[1] Dame Sarah MacIntosh DCMG, British High Commissioner to Australia

[2] The Hon. Cameron Murphy MLC, Deputy Government Whip in the Legislative Council, Co-Chair Friends of Ireland Parliamentary Group; the Honourable Mark Speakman SC MP, Leader of the Opposition, Member for Cronulla, Parliament of NSW; Dr Marjorie Spooner O’Neil MP, Member for Coogee, Co-Chair Friends of Ireland Parliamentary Group

[3] Ms Louis Cantillon, Consul-General, British Consulate General; Ms Rosie Keane, Consul-General, Consulate General of Ireland

[4] ‘[Advertisement]’, Daily Telegraph, 31 May 1888, p.8, available here

[5] Throughout the tour, the team was variously referred to as “England”, the “British footballers”, and the “English Footballers”

[6] Alex McClintock, ‘The Forgotten Story of… the 1888 Lions Tour’, The Guardian online, 27 June 2013, available here

[7] ‘Our History: Australian Rugby—Its Origins and Evolution’, Rugby Australia website, available here

[8] ‘The Big Football Match: Some Reflections’, Australian Town and Country Journal, 9 June 1888, p.39, available here

[9] ‘International Football Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 1888, p.4, available here. Another report cites the number as 10,000: ‘The English Footballers in Australia: England Versus New South Wales’, Sportsman, 6 June 1888, p.3, available here

[10] ‘125 Years of Rivalry—Waratahs and the Lions’, Lions Rugby website, available here

[11] ‘The English Footballers in Australia: England Versus New South Wales’, Sportsman, 6 June 1888, p.3, available here

[12] ‘International Football Match’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 June 1888, p.4, available here

[13] ‘The Big Football Match: Some Reflections’, Australian Town and Country Journal, 9 June 1888, p.39, available here

[14] ‘Football’, Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate, 2 June 1888, p.6, available here; Simon Smale, ‘When the British and Irish Lions played Victorian Rules Football—and Beat One of Adelaide’s Best’, ABS News online, 12 July 2025, available here

[15] Simon Smale, ‘When the British and Irish Lions played Victorian Rules Football—and Beat One of Adelaide’s Best’, ABS News online, 12 July 2025, available here

[16] Alex McClintock, ‘The Forgotten Story of… the 1888 Lions Tour’, The Guardian online, 27 June 2013, available here

[17] Simon Smale, ‘When the British and Irish Lions played Victorian Rules Football—and Beat One of Adelaide’s Best’, ABS News online, 12 July 2025, available here

[18] Alex McClintock, ‘The Forgotten Story of… the 1888 Lions Tour’, The Guardian online, 27 June 2013, available here

[19] Simon Smale, ‘When the British and Irish Lions played Victorian Rules Football—and Beat One of Adelaide’s Best’, ABS News online, 12 July 2025, available here

[20] Alex McClintock, ‘The Forgotten Story of… the 1888 Lions Tour’, The Guardian online, 27 June 2013, available here

[21] According to the Bank of England inflation calculator, goods and services costing ₤600 in 1888 would be worth £67,826.77 in July 2025: Bank of England website, available here